Anderson Family Big Holiday Adventure: 10th June - Leaving Orlando going to Vancouver via Houston!

Leaving Orlando and arriving in Vancouver

via Houston

10th June

In the wee hours of the morning we sneak out of the house or at least we had planned to sneak out but it was hilarious as when Colin was setting the alarm the sprinklers came on!! Hee hee so now we know that the sprinklers come on at 3.30am ha ha!!

Our last glimpse of the house, the car is all packed just need to get the last precious piece of cargo in the car, our beautiful sleeping beauty!!

Oh so sorry Amy to wake you up but we need to get on our next adventure!!

We have arrived at the airport!

We head to the airport and arrive at 4am!! No check in desks for dropping off the car, it is a park up the car, leave the keys in the car and walk away!! That feels too weird and we can’t just leave the car so we take a note of the mileage and things and take the return ticket to the Alamos desk in the terminal building. The guy there isn’t interested in the return ticket and says he can put it in the trash for us, wow this is crazy but never mind the car is dropped off, check in next!!

We use self-service check-in as there is no other option and pay $25 each for our suitcases to go into the hold! We get through security, all shoes off, belts off and laptops and ipads out of the bag! It is funny how each airport has been different with what they want you to take off and check for! Anyway here we are at the gates after taking the skytrain and look at the time!!

We had a nosey in the shop and look at Mr Grumpy, that’s funny on the photoframe it says ‘Born Grumpy!’ Ha ha, Colin isn’t great with lack of sleep so we will have a Mr Grumpy today!!

Amy checking up on the safety briefing!!

The sun is starting to come up now, more civilised time now well if you call 6.30am civilised that is!! We had a bit of a delay as someone lost their passport in the gate area I presume they found it as we took off?!

Arriving in Houston

We are nearly at Houston and flew through a storm, seat belt sign on and it was a bit bumpy!!

Oh we can see land! Our flight was 2hrs 35mins from Orlando to Houston

Wow there are so many flights departing from Houston the display is in alphabetical not time order!

We grab a quick breakfast, Amy had cookies, Colin had a bagel and I had a yoghurt fruit pot

Here we go on our connection from Houston to Vancouver

We have complimentary soft drinks on United Airlines so this was how it went rows of 3 and 3 seats and I was in the middle seat I have to play this one out it is a classic;

Me: Could I have a Coke Zero please

Stewardess (not your typical young totty all of the stewardesses looked like they were near retirement age!): Tea no problem

Me: No Coke Zero please

Stewardess: Sorry I never caught that?

Me: Coke Zero please

Stewardess: Oh Coke, sorry!

Me: No Coke Zero please

Stewardess: Oh you have the cutest accent, sweet I’ll get you a Coke Zero sure!

Phew that was hard work then it was Colin’s turn to ask for a drink, oh my goodness just say ‘No thanks’ Colly or else we will have landed in Vancouver before anyone else gets served ha ha!!! So she says to Colin ‘Oh you have the cutest accent too, sweeeeeeet’ in her deep American accent. I sipped my Coke Zero slowly just in case I choked on it as it was hard work getting it!!!

The worst bit was the second time we got a drink from another stewardess she didn’t understand me either and I eventually settled for Coca Cola, whatever!!! Hilarious though!!!

Snow-capped mountains

Arriving in Vancouver

Our first glimpse of Vancouver

In the airport, Viking boat and wooden bird

Big water feature with the disc on the wall

We have got our 3 suitcases now we have to take a skytrain to Waterfront and then the Seabus. This way then

Tickets for the skytrain

Oh look we can go on the Skytrain to Aberdeen

Here we go the skytrain is coming! So the skytrain goes over the ground and then we come to a tunnel and the skytrain becomes the underground! We get off at Waterfront and then follow the signs to the Seabus, this feels way to smooth a connection for us!

Here is the Seabus parking up!

Here we are we think this is our hotel the white building as Colin remembers seeing the yellow crane in the photos!

We get off the Seabus and head through the Lonsdale Quayside Plaza and the Market on the left

The view over Vancouver city where we have just came from. The big container ship is right in the way of the view though!

The seabus going back across there are two that go back and forth so they come every 15 minutes and the journey takes about 12 minutes

Amy is on a mission to get to the hotel, look at her go!!

Yes Colin was right our hotel is the white building Pinnacle Hotel at the Pier, we arrived at 2.30pm and our room wasn’t ready, check in is at 3pm so we head out for some lunch

We head into the Lonsdale Quay Market to see what is there

We found the Cheshire Cheese Pub good Shepherd’s Pie for me and that is supposed to be a children’s meal burger!!

Here we are, we’ve check in and we are in room 408 on the fourth floor with a mountain view allegedly!! Colin is checking out the mountain view!

As you can see we can see the tip of a mountain above all the apartment blocks, so a loosely termed mountain view then!!

See there we are a mountain!!

Now that is something unusual a window that has blinds from the bathroom into the bedroom!!

The other side of the bathroom

Ok so when we arrived in Orlando our strap had been broken that was strapped round ur suitcase and then I found a leaflet inside our suitcase saying that our bag had been searched and they do not accept responsibility for breaking your locks to gain access to your suitcase! I didn’t see anything else wrong with the suitcase until we went to lock it for going on the Vancouver flight. So we find a padlock in our suitcase that I had packed just in case and this was one of those moments of just in case!! So we put the padlock on and the strap that we can just slide over the suitcase, think we are sorted now. When we get to our bags in Vancouver our strap was gone and so was our padlock!!! Ok so when I open the suitcase in the room the strap had been cut and the padlock mangled!!! That is our suitcase knacked now!! How crazy our suitcases managed to survive to go to Australia twice and all around Europe but two legs of our journey in America and they are getting trashed and broken into by security of all people!!! So from now on our cases will remain open as we have no other option other than buy other suitcases and that won’t be happening while there still is a chance of them wrecking them again, it’s just not worth wasting our money on that happening!!!